A day before he is to surrender before a special court in Mumbai, activist Anand Teltumbde on Monday wrote an open letter to the people of India, stating that the “jingoist nation and nationalism have been weaponised by the political class to destroy dissent and polarise people”. Teltumbde has been named as an accused in the Elgaar Parishad case, which the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has recently taken over from the Pune Police. He had sought more time from the SC for surrendering citing the COVID-19 pandemic. Going to jail at the time of COVID-19 is “virtually a death sentence”, the plea had said. “The jingoist nation and nationalism have been weaponised by the political class to destroy dissent and polarise people. As I see my India being ruined, it is with a feeble hope that I write to you at such a grim moment. Well, I am off to NIA custody and do not know when I shall be able to talk to you again. However, I earnestly hope that you will speak out before your turn comes,” the letter stated. He added that he has an “unblemished record of service for nearly five decades to this country” in various roles, including in the corporate world, as a teacher, a civil rights activist and a public intellectual. A petition by him and activist Gautam Navlakha, seeking extension of time granted to them to surrender before the court, citing COVID-19 pandemic, was earlier rejected by the Supreme Court, which directed them to surrender in a week. The SC had also earlier rejected their anticipatory bail applications. Teltumbde alleged that he was illegally arrested by the Pune Police while he was still under SC protection and his house in the faculty housing complex of Goa Institute of Management was raided in August 2018, while he and his wife were in Mumbai. “They did open our house too, forcibly getting a duplicate key from the security guard, but just video-graphed it and locked it back. Our ordeal began right there. At the advice of our lawyers, my wife took the next available flight to Goa, and lodged a complaint with Bicholim police station that the police had opened our house in our absence and that we would not be responsible if they had planted anything,” the letter stated. It added that the Pune Police had held press conferences claiming he had a link to the Maoists. “On August 31, 2018, in one such press conference, a police officer read out a letter purportedly recovered from the computer of previous arrestees as an evidence against me. The letter was clumsily constructed with the information on the academic conference I had attended, which was easily available on the website of American University of Paris,” the letter said. Teltumbde further said that “draconian legislations” like the UAPA, under which he has been booked, “denude innocent people of their liberties”.
